Bill Reynolds: Cranston man is in cave of dreams

Nick Mendillo is 28 years old, grew up in Cranston, and watches every inning of every Major League Baseball game that’s played every day.He calls it a job.Welcome to the Major League Baseball “Fan Cave.”...

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Posted Apr. 29, 2013 @ 7:05 pm

Nick Mendillo is 28 years old, grew up in Cranston, and watches every inning of every Major League Baseball game that’s played every day.

He calls it a job.

Welcome to the Major League Baseball “Fan Cave.”

You said you’ve never heard of it?

Well that’s part of the deal, too.

Now in its third season, it’s part of MLB’s plan to not only grow its audience, but to bring the game into this century. This is no insignificant thing. Baseball is from a different time and place, this grand old game that seems rooted in some other, slower America, this game that seems to fly in the face of our frantic, wired world.

Or, do you think Yaz ever tweeted?

The “Fan Cave” is MLB’s admission that the times are not only changing, they’ve already changed. Perhaps most telling, the game’s demographic is a 45-year-old male, a scary fact for the lords of the game.

It’s no secret that the NFL is the most popular sport in the country, no secret that the Super Bowl long ago eclipsed the World Series as the most popular sports event. And if we were probably a little late to the dance around here to realize it, given the huge popularity of the Red Sox, watch a game from many other baseball cities and you’ll see all those fans disguised as empty seats.

So what is the “Fan Cave”?

In theory it’s an attempt to change the demographic.

In reality it’s nine so-called “Cave Dwellers” who spend their days inside a huge open room in New York City’s Greenwich Village and watch every baseball game played that day on more TV screens than there are in your average sports bar. There’s an astounding 72 in all, including one huge one in the middle of the room called “The Cave Monster.”

“We’re trying to bridge the gap between baseball and popular culture,” Mendillo says, which means music, media, interactive technology, art and anything else you can name.

He is a self-professed Sox fan, who graduated from URI with degrees in English, education, film and media, and theater. He also plays guitar, drums and the mandolin, and says he studies quantum physics in his spare time when he’s not going to heavy metal concerts. If he’s not a contemporary Renaissance man, he’ll no doubt do until someone else comes along.

He originally moved to New York to do comedy, where he belongs to something called the Upright Citizens Brigade.

He applied to be part of the “Fan Cave,” one of an amazing 22,000 applicants. But he kept making the cut until he was in the top 30. Then he was sent to Arizona for spring training, and one thing led to another until he became one of nine selected, six men and three women.

But the job is more than just being a fan.

For one thing, it’s a long day at the office, having to be there when the first afternoon games start on the East Coast and staying until the last one ends on the West Coast. But it’s a lot more than just watching games.

The job is all about social media, so there is constant tweeting (he’s @grevalt), constant blogging (http://mendillosportsblog.tumblr.com/), constant interaction with fans, all based on the premise that in this new world order you have to interact with fans, especially those whose world revolves around social media.

That’s the key, certainly.

But it’s even more than that.

The average person who interacts with MLB’s “Fan Cave” supposedly is 20 years younger than the average baseball fan. More important, they’ve come of age differently, living in a world that was all but unimaginable 20 years ago.

There’s already been a huge response to the “Fan Cave.” There supposedly are more than 1.2 million followers on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, things that didn’t even exist over a decade ago.

You want societal change?

We’re all living in the middle of it, Major League Baseball included.

But that’s not the only thing that’s different.

There’s also no attempt to be impartial deep down there in the “Fan Cave,” none of what they teach you in journalism school. That’s too old-school. This is watching with your passion. Mendillo is described as a “Boston Red Sox fan from Cranston, R.I.”

“I’ve always been a big fan,” he says. “I first applied to the Cave two years ago and didn’t get it, but really didn’t think a lot about it. But I was always on their website and this year decided to try again.”

So there he is every day, this 28-year-old who is at ground zero in Major League Baseball’s attempt to, if not exactly reinvent itself, deal with its demographic problem. There he is sitting every day in the game’s future.

“This is a blessing,” says Nick Mendillo, “but if I wasn’t a baseball fan it would be the worst job in the world.”